Thirty years ago, President Gerald Ford stunned the nation by granting his crooked predecessor, Richard Nixon, a preemptive blanket pardon for all of his White House crimes. He did so, Ford said, for the good of the country: "My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquility but to use every means that I have to insure it."

The pardon got the ex-president off the legal hook on a host of criminal activities he had ordered, led and/or covered up. The Watergate crimes alone ranged from burglary to campaign sabotage, espionage, and illegal fund-raising, and included efforts to exploit, subvert or pervert the Justice and State Departments, the CIA, the IRS, the FBI and the Secret Service, as well as a wide variety of other assaults on the U.S. Constitution and on the rules of democratic fair play.

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With the purpose of writing about true crime in an authoritative, fact-based manner, veteran journalists J. J. Maloney and J. Patrick O’Connor launched Crime Magazine in November of 1998. Their goal was to cover all aspects of true crime: Read More